


Another Time (five ways in which Jack failed to cause a paradox)

by aralias



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Community: tardis_gen, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-20
Updated: 2011-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-18 10:36:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/pseuds/aralias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for tardis_gen, for the prompt: We know from Torchwood series two that Jack has been working at Torchwood 3 for some time, ten years at least. If he was looking for the Doctor all that time, why didn't he just walk up to Nine and Rose when they (and pre-immortality Jack) visited Cardiff in 2005 to recharge at the Rift?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Time (five ways in which Jack failed to cause a paradox)

**One.**

He’s alive with the ever-painful spasm and a heaved gasp that rattles in his lungs. _Drowning,_ Jack thinks wryly, as he struggles to regulate his breathing. Not the best way to go. Whatever they say in the pamphlets. It feels like he’s been dead for some time from this one, his body taking a while to work the excess water from his system. That heavy feeling in his chest is presumably about a litre of fluid that it figures he can cough up later.

There’s a pale sheet over his face and Jack pulls it back as he sits up. Great - the Morgue. Well, at least they know him here. Sure enough, there’s a pile of his own (dry) clothing to his right, and a note from Molly, the chief mortician asking him to call her once he’s not dead any more. Molly is at least forty and distinctly round around the middle, but she has a beautiful mass of curly black hair, lovely dark eyes. Jack shrugs and smiles. Could do a lot worse.

His gun and his phone are in a kidney dish to the right of the clothing pile. Still buck naked, Jack reaches for the phone, which choose that moment to beep at him, reminding him that he has an unread message. Or, as it turns out, messages. Six of them.

As soon as he reads the first one (from Susie — ‘Just saw you go into the mayor’s office. What’s going on? And why aren’t you answering your com?’), Jack realises what his waterlogged brain has thus far been keeping from him. It was today. The Doctor was here today. Damn.

The rest of the messages read:

1\. ‘Jack? Turn on your com. Major rift activity. Get back here. Now.’ (Susie, again).  
2\. “Where the fuck are you??” (Owen).  
3\. “Jack, the rift’s just split wide open. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m trying to close it, but I don’t even know where to start.’ (Tosh).  
4\. “Oh. Never mind. It seems to have closed.” (Tosh).  
5\. “I assume if you’d wanted the sandwich in the fridge, you’d be back by now.” (Owen)

“Last time I go hunting fish people in the canal,” Jack tells the morgue at large.

It’s filled with dead people, the kind who don’t wake up again, so there’s no answer.

“Yep,” Jack says, despite the silence, as he pulls on his pants. “Lost my sandwich and the chance to see the Doctor again. Not a great day. But,” he says, catching sight of the note from Molly, “at least, I got a date out of it, which is more than I can say for the fish people, though, don’t let them tell you I didn’t ask.”

He laughs and pulls on the rest of his clothes and tries not to think about how long it might be before the Doctor next decides to visit Cardiff.

  
 **Two.**

Jack stands in line for a coffee while he waits for the Doctor to appear. Owen bought a fancy machine in his first week, but he threw away the instructions almost immediately (along with the old machine) and nobody can be work out how to use the new one. Tosh has tried, obviously, but there seems to be some kind of art to the process and no matter how many times she augments the machine (26, by last count), it still produces a thick brown sludge. Torchwood Three are surviving on Nescafe instant, but only barely.

Bosphorus is a nice restaurant: large glass windows over looking Cardiff Bay, the orange juice served in wine glasses. Though he hasn’t been here for a long time, he remembers the coffee’s pretty good, too. The woman in front of him at the till is having difficulty choosing what she wants, but Jack’s got time to kill. About, he checks his wrist-strap, ten minutes until they show up. Perfect.

Finally, the indecisive woman moves on, and Jack asks for his coffee. Before he can pay, though, the young guy behind leans forward, a rather crumpled ten pound note in his hand. “And I’ll have a tea with just a — dash of milk. Both to go. Thank you very much.” He turns and flashes a grin, “All right, Jack?”

Jack raises an eyebrow. Usually he’s all for strange men buying him drinks, but this is a very important day: one he’s been waiting for over a hundred years. “Thanks,” he says - there's no need to be rude. Then, “Do I know you?” because it's now eight minutes.

“You’re waiting for me,” the kid says with another smile. He frowns — his face apparently endless mobile - and pushes his long fringe out of his face. “Not a great idea, though. Major paradox, the universe explodes and we all die. Ah, our drinks are ready. Great service here. Come on. We can probably miss ourselves if we go out through the back door.”

 _“Doctor?”_ Jack says, rather stupidly, as the other man starts to leave with his tea and Jack’s coffee.

The Doctor turns. His eyes dart around as if checking for another version of himself, which could well happen in this time and place. “That’s me?” he offers, having established that his younger self isn’t around. He jerks his head at the exit, with another crooked smile, “Come on. Let’s avoid that paradox you were so looking forward to.”

Outside, he hands Jack his coffee and drinks a large gulp of his own drink, which is still steaming.

“So are you here keeping tabs on me or have you finally come back to get me?” Jack says, trying for casual.

“Neither,” the Doctor says, without apology. “I arrived here by mistake, got out and almost walked into the TARDIS. Then I thought, since I was already here, I’d check up on you — see if you were getting up to mischief, which you were. So," he says, frowning, then smiling, "I suppose, the first one, but only by accident.”

 _“Thanks,”_ Jack says.

 _“Don’t be like that,”_ the Doctor says, mock-petulant. “Come on, Jack. There’s obviously a reason I’m not here to get you. You’re smart, I’m sure you can figure it out. Now, drink your coffee before it gets cold.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good man. And try to enjoy it. I handed over money for that coffee.”

“You’ve changed.”

“I know!” the Doctor says, and laughs. “Good. Better. It really is nice to see you again, Jack, honestly. Even if you are having a sulk. And you’re looking well. Last time we met, you were a bit,” he pulls his mouth wide and mimes something that could be anything at all with his hands.

“A bit…?” Jack copies the movement.

The Doctor grins. “Yer.”

“Am I supposed to get that?”

“Not really,” the Doctor says. “Oh, look,” he points, “here we are. Back at the TARDISes. They look quite good together, don't they? It's almost a shame to ruin it, but I really ought to go before the universe realises what’s happening.”

“So you’re not going to take me away?” Jack asks, a little desperate, as he and the Doctor walk over to what looks like a new modern art installation: two blue phone boxes a metre apart.

“No,” the Doctor says. He points his thumb at the other TARDIS. “And neither is he, so leave that me alone, all right?" He smiles. “But I wouldn’t give up yet, Jack. I’ll be back, I promise. Though why you want to leave this, I don’t know.”

“Really,” Jack says.

“Absolutely,” the Doctor enthuses. “Look at this city, Jack. All of Cardiff at your feet.” He throws his arms wide as if to encompass it all and, unfortunately, the wind chooses this moment to gust through the plaza and whip the empty paper cup out of his hand. The Doctor grimaces. “That ruins it a bit. God, am I going to be done for littering?”

Jack sighs. “I’ll get it.”

“Sorry,” the Doctor calls after him. It’s the first time he’s said it and it’s possible, Jack thinks, that the word means more than just sorry for this moment.

As he reaches the cup, and pounces on it, _“gotcha,”_ he hears a thump and then a pulsating whirr and, when he turns back, there is only one blue police box standing in front of the Water Tower.

 _“Bastard,”_ Jack says aloud.

  
 **Three.**

“Well, how long do you think it will take?” Jack demands.

“Calm down,” the breakdown man says in a pleasant Welsh tenor that is, Jack guesses, typically very useful in comforting distraught motorists. “It’s just a flat tyre. I’ll swap it over for you and have you back on the road again in half an hour, don’t you worry about it.”

Jack lets out a grunt of frustration and paces away. This is _ridiculous._

He should have sent someone else, but Yvonne had insisted on the personal touch. He should have left an hour earlier, but Yvonne had insisted he stay. Since Yvonne is the reason Torchwood Three can afford to run, Jack had gone to London and stayed until three, even though the Doctor was due to leave Cardiff by seven. He would have made it back, but for the flat tyre and the hour the AA took to reach him. Damn, damn, damn.

“What on Earth is that?” the breakdown man says, suddenly.

Jack turns, and there, in the direction of Cardiff, is an explosion of blue and white light. His earpiece beeps and Jack activates it with a firm press of his index finger.

“Let me guess,” he says, before Toshiko can speak, “major rift activity.”

  
 **Four.**

There’s a small voice in a part of his brain that has been silent for centuries. Now, it says, “You are entering a time period in which your dual presence is likely to cause a significant paradox. To prevent such a paradox occurring you are being temporarily sedated for the good of the universe. The Time Agency thanks you for your cooperation in this matter and wishes you a pleasant paradox-free tomorrow.”

By the time Jack wakes up on the floor of his office, the Doctor has gone.

  
 **Five.**

“What are you captain of? The innuendo squad?”

Jack laughs. Across the plaza, his other self responds to Mickey’s rapier-like wit with an equally withering “whatever” sign. Rose taught him that: the W, the L on the forehead, and the strange banging together of fists from a nineties sit-com he hadn’t seen then and caught this time around as it aired.

They all look so happy, jostling around the TARDIS. Even Mickey, the permanently put upon. _I watched you grow up,_ Jack thinks fondly, watching the kid trying to get the better of Doctor. _I called the ambulance when you broke your arm_. Rose is practically radiant: the sun, the TARDIS, all her boys playing together as nicely as they might be expected to. This was a good day. One of the best. That tight green jacket, though — ugh, what was he thinking? Was he really trying to fit in?

Approximately a hundred and fifty years older, Jack stands in long great-coat in the middle of a gaggle of tourists (other tourists), charming the young female guide and two of her flock. Every so often his eyes flick to the Doctor’s group, but he remembers the Doctor confidently predicting that nobody would look over at the TARDIS, and Jack doesn’t actually want to be recognised.

He knows enough about time travel to know that this isn’t the right time. He knows enough about the Doctor to know that the guy won’t welcome him back with his other self still on board, so there wouldn’t be any point anyway. He just wants to watch this other life of his, the way he watched Rose and Mickey grow up on the Powell Estate. The rest of his team are off doing field work in other parts of the city so they won’t spot him in that horrible jacket. It’s safe. No major paradoxes. No TARDIS trip today. This is an indulgence, but one he’s willing to allow himself.

“We’re going into town next,” the pretty guide tells him. “Do you want to maybe come with us?”

"You know I’d love to,” Jack says, as his other self and his friends move off in that direction, “but, I’m afraid, I’ve got work to do here. Another time, though, ladies.”

With a smile, he extracts himself from the group and, with a final look at the blue box sitting in the middle of the plaza, strides back to Torchwood, great-coat flapping behind him.


End file.
